Monday July 7, 2008

The girls seem to be handling their temperatures fine with the constant bed temperature, thus we’re making progress on one of the “go home” requirements! Nurse Sue and I dressed the girls in cute little pink outfits today – so cute! At 2pm, Evie got practice and did ok. However, both girls are still getting their “fast food” as I have decided to term the feedings through their OG tubes. Poor Maggie had an incident when her nurses were moving her oxygen and somehow tipped the bubbler (water) and ran water down her cannula. I figured out the “accidental bath” because her clothes were wet – and thus she was colder than she should have been. So, I changed her outfit and snuggled her to warm her up. So, we postponed her feeding until 8:30 pm. But, she recovered quickly and at 5pm the girls went to their open crib! They are sharing a crib so they can keep each other warm. And warm they were – 3 hours later they were toasty 99°F. I’m so excited they are doing well and all bundled up next to each other. With that much bundling, the girls can’t move very far, so I think they sleep pretty well. And Evie is definitely related to the Wilcox side that can sleep anywhere and through anything. Oh, and we get to move to 2 practices a day tomorrow.

For the Dr. report: Maggie’s ductus is still open and she also has an Atrial Septal Defect (ASD). Since there has been no change in these for the last few weeks, we can assume they are not going away on their own. However, they are not causing her any problems either – so we are not going to do anything about them until they do. We’ll end up having regular check-ups with a pediatric cardiologist after we go home to monitor the conditions and probably have surgery before she is 2 years old. However, when Maggie is big enough, they can fix the conditions with a catheter instead of incision. The girls discontinued some of their medicine, including their Epogen shots, Phenobarbital (for jaundice), and Synthroid. Regarding their eyes, we’re not on the surgery list yet, but they are still keeping a close watch on Evie’s eyes. The eye doctor will probably check them again before the end of the week to see how quickly they are progressing. Dr. Hiller said that if it weren’t for the eyes, we’d probably be feeding and growing in Bozeman. Well, at least that tells me that the girls are progressing the way they should be and are the “easy kids” in the nursery.

p.s. I switched cameras this week – and don’t have the correct card reader or cable to upload the pictures. So, there probably won’t be new pictures until this weekend :(